J. Aerosol ScL Vol.30.Suppl.1,pp.

$645-$646,1999
©1999PublishedbyElsevierScienceLtd.Allrightsreserved
Pergamon printedinGreatBritain
0021-8502/99/$- seefrontmatter

S T A T I S T I C A L ANALYSIS ON A L O N G T E R M STUDY OF N U M B E R SIZE

D I S T R I B U T I O N S IN T H E URBAN AREA

B. Wehner and A. Wiedensohler

Institute for Tropospheric Research, Permoserstr. 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany

KEYWORDS
Number size distribution, TDMPS, multivariate statistics, urban aerosol

INTRODUCTION
Anthropogenic aerosols influence the global and regional climate, and may also have an
negative impact on human health. Especially in urban areas, where the population density is
relatively high, many of anthropogenic particle sources such as traffic, residual heating, local
power plants etc. exist. These sources cause higher particle number and mass concentrations
in the urban atmosphere.. The influence of the particle number concentration on acute or
long-term epidemic effects is relatively unknown and topic of present research. As one step
to solve this problem, the influence of aerosols should be investigated detailed, which
requires the knowledge about particle concentrations in the urban atmosphere and their
sources.

EXPERIMENT
A long term study is continuously running at the Institute of Tropospheric Research on the
outskirts of Leipzig (Germany) since January 1997. A TDMPS (Twin Differential Mobility
Particle Sizer) System measures the number size distributions between 3 and 800 nm.
Additionally, trace gases NO, NO2, 03, CO and SO2 are measured as well as meteorological
parameters as temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and
direction, precipitation and global radiation. The dominating wind direction is from
downtown Leipzig, however, there also occur meteorological situations with advection of
air masses which are less influenced by the city area.
The measurement equipment for the meteorological parameters, as well as the inlets for trace
gases and particles are located on the top of the institute building, about 12 m above ground.
The TDMPS-system and the trace gas analyser operate inside the building under room-
temperature conditions.
Thus, a large data set is available and will be carefully investigated. Multivariate statistical
methods are used to identify systematic correlation between the aerosol, meteorological and
gas phase parameters. A special interest is directed towards the relation of the occurrence of
high particle concentration to gas phase chemical or meteorological parameters. Additional
parameters as the day of week, hour of day and season were also included into the statistical
investigation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The principal component analysis is a powerful tool to help understand such complex
scientific data sets. Previous investigations pointed out, that there are obviously significant
differences between summer and winter months. This fact and other suspects should be
reconfirmed with the multivariate statistics.

$645
$646 Abstracts of the 1999 European Aerosol Conference

Preliminary results are shown in fig. 1. It contains the mean diurnal variation of particle
concentration for the smallest measured particles during winter and summer months.
Therefore, the number size distributions were divided into different size classes and averaged
over all days available in June and July 1998 (summer) as well as December 1997 and
January 1998 (winter). Three of the lowest size classes are presented here. Additionally, the
global radiation was averaged over these days and included into the figure.

I I I I I

winter --~-- solar radiation'. 500

E lOO00
.~o 3 - 10 n m 400

.......... 10 - 20 nm 300

50oo . . - ..................... ................ 2 0 - 3 0 n m rE

..-:J ...................... ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

O0 0-.~. ..~----,~. -.~- -.~. . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ ~ ' ~ =~=. .---.~. .- - ~ ~...~...~. -,~...--.0 ~m

' I ' I ~ I ' I ' I '

10000 - summer ,/~ ~ ~7"%. J ,..

-=. t ,oo
,ooo_ ........................
',,:.L..\ 1
........... .""" " ......... ~:;::.;-lOO
"~. . . . ~ 0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24
hour of day
Fig. 1: Mean diurnal variation of particle concentration in different size classes for summer
and winter compared with solar radiation.

The global radiation has its maximum around noon with much higher values in summer, as
expected. For the summer months (lower figure) can be concluded that particles with
diameters between 3 and 20 nm show a similar diurnal variation and these two curves have
their concentration maximum between 12 and 2 p.m. Larger particles between 20 and 30 nm
do not show such a strong variation. Obviously new ultrafine particles are regularly formed
under the influence of high solar radiation in summer time.

The upper figure contains the same parameters for the winter months with the same scale.
The three curves concerning particle concentration do not show a strong diurnal variation.
The maxima during the day are much lower than those of summer months, while the night-
time values here and the concentrations generally increase in winter. Obviously, for the
formation processes of the very small particles higher values of solar radiation are necessary
as they occur only in summer.